


The Echoes of Toulon

by WolfOfAnsbach



Category: Historical RPF
Genre: Alternate History, French Revolution, Historical, Napoleon dies early, french revolutionary wars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-11 07:38:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4426901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolfOfAnsbach/pseuds/WolfOfAnsbach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1793, a young Artillery officer named Napoleone di Buonaparte decimated the royalist and British forces holding the harbor at Toulon and took it for the French Republican armies. He would go on to become Napoleon I, Emperor of France, a figure who can probably be said, without exaggeration, to have laid down the foundations for the course of 19th and 20th century history. While besieging Toulon, he was pierced through the leg by a British bayonet. What if that soldier had aimed higher, and found his mark?</p><p>This is an overview of a world that never knew Napoleon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Echoes of Toulon

Toulon is back in the hands of the French.

 

it was taken by Royalist rebels months prior, handed over to the British navy, to facilitate their war of aggression against the nascent French Republic. But the armies fighting under the tricolor have proved triumphant.

 

The British fleet burns in the harbor, and whatever ships are still sea-worthy beat a hasty retreat into the Mediterranean mists. Republican soldiers raise a hearty cheer and belt out _La Marseillaise_. The strains of _Le Chant du Depart_ float over the still, yet bloody waters of Toulon’s port.

 

Royalists are summarily executed. The corpses of British officers and enlisted men alike float face down in the waters, among the wreckage of their once proud vessels.

 

The forces of counterrevolution have failed. This day belongs to the republic.

 

But the architect of this victory will not partake in its spoils. The man responsible for the English fleet’s destruction, thanks to his masterful use of artillery, lies dead in the dirt, heart run through by a British bayonet. His death was instantaneous.

 

His name was Napoleone di Buonaparte, a young Artillery officer hailing from the backwater island known as Corisca. Napoleone was reared on the exploits of Caesar, the conquests of Alexander, and through all the days of his boyhood dreamt of standing shoulder to shoulder with these giants of history on equal footing in the pantheon of great statesmen and implacable generals.

 

It doesn’t matter now.

 

Whatever he might have been, he will be counted as nothing but another nameless casualty of war.

 

1793 passes away.

 

His brothers, sisters, and mother will weep when informed of his death. Napoleone’s body will be collected from where it has fallen in the morning, and his kin will inter it next to his father’s. They will visit, from time to time, until all have forgotten him or died. One cold winter in 1863, his youngest and last surviving sister Paoletta will leave a fresh bouquet of roses on his neglected grave. She will pull her shawl tight around her against the freezing December winds, and climb back into her carriage for the journey home. When she arrives, she will make a cup of tea and reminisce with her young maid about the days of her youth. She will recall, through the fog of decades past, Napoleone’s confidence that one day all would remember his name. She will retire to her room for a brief nap. She will never wake up.

 

It is the last time Napoleone di Buonaparte’s name will fall from another’s lips.

 

In the summer of 1794 the Committee of Public Safety is overthrown by elements within the French Convention who fear this spate of persecutions against those perceived to be enemies of the Republic has gone too far. These men come to be known as the Thermidorians, and this coup the Thermidorian reaction (after the month of Thermidor in the French Revolutionary calendar). A five-man government known as the Directory is established. So begins a Conservative backlash against the more radical elements of the Revolution. The Jacobin Club is persecuted and forced underground, and a new constitution, the Constitution of the Year III, is established. It does away with much of the previous constitution’s egalitarianism. What is known to history as the “Reign of Terror” ends. 

 

In 1795, the Directory decides to prepare for an invasion of Great Britain, France’s implacable and eternal foe, and the nation responsible for funding the wars France has been forced to fight since 1793. Several hundred ships are appropriated for this purpose, and thousands of soldiers and civilians are trained as sailors.

 

On December 8th, 1795, the invasion commences. It is an absolute disaster. Not a single ship manages to make landfall on the British coast. They are destroyed in the English Channel by the Royal Navy. Thousands of sailors drown or die in bursts of cannonfire. France’s available manpower is decimated. Sensing weakness, France’s enemies mobilize. For years, the conservative monarchies of Europe have ached to crush Revolutionary France, fearing that “the king-slaying menace” will spread to their own nations.

 

 France is faced with a three-pronged assault, the Austrians from the south-east, the Russians, Prussians, and a number of assorted German states from the north-east, and the Spanish-joined by British regulars-from the south-west. With so many of her soldiers lying at the bottom of the English Channel, the French cause is lost from the beginning. Republican armies fight valiantly, but on April 8th, 1796, Prussian forces enter Paris. The tricolor is hauled down, and in its place flies once again the Bourbon fleur-de-lis. Dozens of regicides-men who had voted for the death of Louis XVI three years earlier-are executed by makeshift firing squads. The graves of Revolutionary leaders are desecrated by royalist mobs. Priests and bishops re-sanctify those churches and cathedrals despoiled by Montagnards during the Revolution.

 

Those who either refused to reconcile with the returning Bourbon monarchy, or know they can expect nothing but a firing squad, flee the country. The majority flee to the United States, but smaller numbers take refuge in Britain or Switzerland instead. Among those who make for America are Luciano Buonaparte, Lazare Carnot, André Masséna, and Joseph Fouché.

 

In the United States, dozens of Republican and Revolutionary clubs spring up under the guidance of these French expats, and the cities of New York, New Bedford, and Boston become a sort of promised land for those exiled from Europe for their radical views.

 

It is in Boston that Luciano Buonaparte, the son of minor Corsican aristocrats and a devoted Republican, pens his landmark piece, _On Revolution_. In this work, he attempts to explain the failure of the French Revolution with two factors. First and foremost, he asserts, the blame rests at the feet of the Directory. In the overthrow of Robespierre, the Thermidorians snatched power from the hands of the people and delivered it back up to an aloof elite. This, Buonaparte argues, destroyed the people’s sense of patriotism and sovereignty, ensuring they were not fully devoted to the defense of France when her enemies began their invasion. A successful revolution must be entirely directed and controlled by the people, not any sort of exclusive group or vanguard. Only by vesting absolute power in the public at large can liberty and the extinction of tyranny be guaranteed. In Revolutionary circles, “Directorialist” quickly becomes a common epithet hurled at those who favor moderation or compromise with the reactionary opposition. Secondly, he blames the revolution’s failure on the fact that France was surrounded by hostile powers. Revolution, Buonaparte argues, must spring up independently in several nations at once. Otherwise, the reactionary nations surrounding any revolutionary state will be able to move in and crush the isolated and unsupported revolt. This tenet was summarized by the maxim “Unless there is Revolution in France as there is Revolution in Germany, there can be Revolution in neither Germany or France”.

 

 _On Revolution,_ though banned in France as well as most other European states, finds an immediate and receptive audience among the radical elements across the continent. Disillusioned by the apparent failure of the “French Experiment”, Buonaparte’s theories offer the hope that it was not any inherent flaws in Republican or Revolutionary ideals that led to France’s defeat, but rather flaws in the way these ideals were implemented. Buonaparte’s philosophy soon comes to be called “Spartacism”, after the pen name “Spartacus” that he often used in his early writings, or “Bonapartism” (due to a common misspelling of his surname in the American press that dropped the ‘u’).

 

Meanwhile, with the stroke of an occupier’s pen, the French Republic is abolished. The Bourbon monarchy, destroyed almost four years earlier, is re-established. The Count of Provence, brother of the dead King, is placed on the throne as Louis XVIII.

 

The Revolution had begun in 1789, as a simple attempt at reform. Yet it had quickly escalated into a vicious, bloody war between the past and the present, a rebellion against throne and altar. Tradition battled with Enlightenment, and for the moment at least, it seemed Enlightenment had won. The king himself was slain, baptizing the newborn French Republic in his blood. Churches were ransacked, their venerable altars and relics smashed, burned as symbols of royal oppression, to make way for temples of reason and statues of liberty. Aristocrats were hunted in the streets, and idealistic revolutionaries lionized the people as a sovereign entity, the equal and even superior of any king or prince. France was determined to sweep away the ancient hierarchies of Europe, and forge a new world from the smoke of cannon and the glimmer of bayonets. All across the continent, sovereigns trembled. Each could see in their mind's eye an image of himself being led to the scaffold, amongst a jeering crowd of those they had once counted as their subjects. The thought of a royal line being erased and a republic set up on its grave was too much to bear. So the conservative powers collectively declared war on the French. And now they had emerged victorious.

 

The revolution that held sway since 1789 is granted no concessions. Each and every constitution by which the nation has abided since the fall of the Bastille is abolished. The throne and altar tower over France once more. Tradition has beaten Enlightenment into the dust.

 

Emigrés, those who fled France in the early days of the Revolution, terrified by mob violence and the rapid disappearance of their ancient noble privileges, return in droves. They demand their lands, auctioned off after their flights to foreign states, be returned to them immediately. The king complies. Those peasants and workers who bought the estates of emigrated nobles are unceremoniously booted out. Not the slightest compensation is offered. Thousands are rendered homeless.  

 

The new king and his court get to work immediately, toiling night and day to wipe away all vestiges of Revolution, and restore the Ancién Regime in full force. The singing of _La Marseillaise_ is banned, punishable by flogging, or worse, depending on the disposition of one’s local officials. Flying the tricolor flag of the republic becomes a capital offense, as does wearing a sash or cockade bearing its colors. Seigneurial dues are restored, and the guillotine, is no longer used for executions due to its eternal association with the Terror.

 

All sights and sounds which might recall the Revolution are suppressed, but even Louis XVIII, heir to the great Sun-King of France, can see into the people’s hearts and minds.

 

In dusty attics and moldy basements, tricolor flags are furled and hidden away, yearning for the day they might flutter triumphantly again. Secret Republican clubs spring up across the nation, idealistic young students and old veterans of the wars coming together to sing old revolutionary songs and toast the names of Marat, Robespierre, and Carnot. The king’s public appearances are never received as warmly, nor attended to in the numbers they were before the Revolution.

 

The kings of Europe congratulate themselves on quashing the revolutionary menace. They refuse to recognize that an idea can never be killed. Those who propagate it, can be shot, tortured, stabbed, or drowned, but their ideals can live forever as long as they find sympathetic ears.

 

“Long live the Republic!”

 

The crack of a pistol sounds. The crowd reels. A young noble is the first to scream. The man’s face is drenched with blood and brain, bits of shattered skull bound up in the hair of his wig.

 

It is not his.

 

King Louis XVIII falls to the cobblestones, blood pouring from the ghastly crater in the back of his head. The old man’s eye has been blown out, and the right side of his face is a gory ruin. His royal vestments are drenched in scarlet, hands twitching as the life quickly leaves his body.

 

His assassin has time only to raise his smoking pistol to the stormy sky, and give a shout of “Death to tyrants!” before the soldiers cut him down.

 

The man’s name was Pierre Drouet. He fought at Valmy, where France was saved from the invading Prussians in 1793. He also was one of those patriotic Sans-Culottes who roamed the streets at the height of the revolution, searching out enemies of the Republic wherever they might hide. In his journals, found by the soldiers who ransack his house hours after the assassination, he had referred to the day the Prussians took Paris as the worst of his life.

 

His body now lies in the street, alongside that of the fallen king. The blood of king and assassin runs together between the rain-slicked stones.

 

Somewhere, a bell tolls the New Year.

 

1800 is ushered in by a light snowfall.

 

Drouet’s head is hacked off and stuck on the walls of the Tuileries, as a warning to all other would be regicides. But the damage has been done. Two consecutive kings have died at the hands of the people. The myth of royal invincibility, that the king is somehow exceptional, is fading fast.

 

The people begin to lose their fear.

 

The strains of _Ça Ira_ are heard on street corners and in cafes. Youths pelt soldiers with rotten fruit. The tricolor begins to appear on coat lapels or the rims of hats.

 

In secret clubs across Europe, republicans toast the death of the one they call tyrant. Graffiti appears on the walls of buildings in Paris, Lyons, Nice; “Now, the Count of Artois”.

 

The Count of Artois is Louis XVIII’s younger brother, now set to take the throne. He is fiercely reactionary, in love with the romantic image of pre-revolutionary France he has cultivated in his mind. He despises revolution, republicanism, and reform with a passion that surprises even many of his supporters. His coronation is held in the Cathedral at Reims, as have been the coronations of French kings for centuries. All seems to go well. His forehead is anointed with a holy oil, and a glittering crown is placed upon his brow. The reign of King Charles X begins.

 

Then a great explosion rocks the cathedral. The new king is unharmed, but sixteen nobleman and twenty-eight spectators die.

 

The perpetrators are never brought to justice, but the King is certain republicans and “neo-Jacobins” are to blame. The already harsh repressive measures instituted by the monarchy are increased. In what comes to be known as the White Terror, hundreds of accused revolutionaries are shot en masse, or torn to pieces by royalist mobs, with the full approval of King Charles. Even in the reactionary nations, normally sympathetic to the restored Bourbon crown, these actions are often met with disapproval.

 

The Bourbon monarchy’s popularity drops to an all time low, matched only by the seething hatred the French people held for the king and aristocrats during the darkest days of the revolution.

 

Civil war is brewing.


End file.
